The Huawei P50 Pocket! the more affordable flip phone?

The Huawei P50 Pocket is the company's latest foldable, and this one is available globally. The P50 Pocket is the half-phone-to-full-phone kind of foldable, similar to the Galaxy Z Flip lineup. The Pocket opens up to reveal a well-sized 6.9-inch OLED display on the inside, so it's that little bit bigger than the Flip. It's also a little heavier, but has a larger battery.

As part of the high-end P50 family, the Pocket has a Snapdragon 888 chipset, only minus the 5G. With a base configuration of 256GB and 8GB of RAM (512GB/12GB available are available too), the Pocket is looking strong on the basic needs. It has a slot for external memory.

The Pocket has a UV illuminator on the back and a sunscreen mode for its camera, for which it includes a dedicated 32MP module on its back. It has a pair of regular cameras too - a 40MP primary one and a 13MP ultrawide, as the monocrome unit and the periscope are reserved for the P50 Pro.

Huawei P50 Pocket specs at a glance:

Body: 170.0x75.5x7.2mm, 190g; glass back, aluminum frame.

Display: 6.90" Foldable OLED, 1B colors, 120Hz, 1188x2790px resolution, 21(-ish):9 aspect ratio, 442ppi; Cover display: OLED, 1.04 inch, 340 x 340 pixels, 328 ppi.

Chipset: Qualcomm SM8350 Snapdragon 888 4G (5 nm): Octa-core (1x2.84 GHz Kryo 680 & 3x2.42 GHz Kryo 680 & 4x1.80 GHz Kryo 680); Adreno 660.

Memory: 256GB 8GB RAM, 512GB 12GB RAM; NM (Nano Memory), up to 256GB (uses shared SIM slot).

OS/Software: HarmonyOS 2.0 (China), EMUI 12 (Europe), no Google Play Services.

Rear camera: Wide (main): 40 MP, f/1.8, PDAF, Laser AF; Ultra wide angle: 13 MP, f/2.2, 120˚, AF; UV: 32 MP, f/1.8, 1/3.14", 0.7µm, AF.

Front camera: 10.7 MP, f/2.2, (ultrawide).

Video capture: Rear camera: 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/120/240fps, gyro-EIS; Front camera: 4K@30/60fps, 1080p@30/60/120/240fps.

Battery: 4000mAh; Fast charging 40W, Reverse charging 5W.

Misc: Fingerprint reader (side-mounted); NFC; UV illuminator.

The box contains a 40W Huawei SuperCharge adapter and USB-A-to-C cable to go with it. A two-piece protective case with adhesive strips along the side edges is also included to help keep it attached to the phone. The metallic-looking outline mimics the phone's frame, while the clear back panels allow you to flaunt that textured glass back.

Huawei didn't make the P50 Pocket water-resistant. it's a huge engineering challenge on a foldable device with moving parts and exposed openings and allt, but the Galaxy Z Flip3 does have an IPX8 rating, so even if it's just protected against water but not dust, it still sounds a bit more reassuring.

The Pocket measures 87.3x75.5x15.2mm when folded and 170x75.5x7.2mm when you open it up. It's thinner than the Flip3 when both phones are in their closed states. Huawei's foldable is wider, though, by more than 3mm. The display has a maximum refresh rate of 120Hz and a touch sampling rate of 300Hz. Huawei points out that it uses a 1440Hz pulse width modulation for dimming (very fast flickering).

The P50 Pocket is powered by a 4,000mAh battery, which doesn't sound like much for a 6.9-inch phone, but it's a good deal more than what the Galaxy Z Flip3 has (3,300mAh). From a test the pocket got about 11hrs in the video playback test (at 60Hz as usual), but also 9 hours of web browsing over Wi-Fi.

The P50 Pocket ships with a 40W charger that follows to the company's proprietary SuperCharge standard. Using that adapter, you can go from a 0% to 100% time of 54min.

If you can live without Netfilx and Google maps and don’t mind the lack of IP rating and want a more affordable foldable phone but if you can go without those, then you should probably look at saving more money and instead getting a Samsung flip model. Below we have listed the Pros and Cons of the Pocket and hopefully this will help you decide better if this could be the device for you!

Pros	Cons
Foldables are very good looking	No IP rating
Folds with no gap	Underpowered speaker system
Inner display is great all around, outer display offers extended functionality	Unreliable Portrait mode
Great main camera, solid ultrawide, great selfie shooting potential	Can throttle hard under continued load
Very fast charging	Unimpressive battery life in comparison to other
Sunscreen test feature can be useful for the right buyer	No Google Services
EMUI 12 is quite powerful even without Google.	No 5G
Works well with other Huawei devices.